"Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away." ~ Suzuki Roshi

Monday, April 14, 2008

Blackie in Antarctica (Redux)

Stefanie first posted this poem from Margaret Atwood's The Door. It brought a smile to my face, so I went looking for The Door at the local library this week. As it happens, it is available. Naturally, I borrowed it, found a seat at a coffee shop, and started reading.

Here is the poem in its entirety - because anything worth posting is worth posting twice:

Blackie in Antarcticaby Margaret Atwood

My sister phones long distance:Blackie’s been put down.Incurable illness. Gauntness and suffering.General heartbreak.I thought you’d want to bury him,she says, in tears.So I wrapped him in red silkand put him in the freezer.

Beside the frozen hamburgerand chicken wings: a paradisefor carnivore. Lying in red silkand state, like Pharaohin a white metallic temple, ora thin-boned Antarcticexplorer in a gelid parka,on who didn’t make it. Or(let's face it) a packageof fish. I hope nobodyen route to dinnerunwraps you by mistake.

What an affront, to be equatedwith meat! Catlike, you hatedbeing ridiculous. You hungeredfor justice, at set hours and in the form of sliced beef stewwith gravy.You wanted whatwas coming to you. (Deathis, though. Ridiculous. And coming to you.For us too.Justice is what we’ll turn into.Then there’s mercy.)

Re-reading "Blackie in Antarctica" still made me smile, because it is so absurd, so touchingly human. Anyone else like the abrupt, bombastic descriptions in the opening stanza?

"Incurable illness. Gauntness and suffering.General heartbreak."

Feels less like a statement on state of mind, more newspaper headlines; beloved pet or not, this is just a cat, not the pope. The morbid humour in juxtaposting the sister's geniune grief against the ludicrous image of the carcass of the black cat mummified in rich, red silk – neatly tucked into cold storage. Why red silk? A vivid red. Yet it could be worse, I suppose. The cat could have been shrouded in hot pink or fuchsia. In flannel. That would have really been undignified.

"Oh Blackie, named bluntly/and without artifice by small girls". What's wrong with Blackie? Or Cat-Cat :)? Some of us remember how in Good Omens, the Boy Antichrist named his pet Satanic Hell-hound, Dog. Dog was a good, solid doggie name. The kind of name that wags its tail at you. Like naming a Jack Russell, Jack or Russell.

I'm glad you found The Door at the library. I still smile when I read the poem too. I love Atwood's dark humor and sense of the absurd.

My mom was rather distressed that I named our cat Cat-Cat. She tried to get me to call her Midnight or Shadow, but two-year-old me either couldn't say those names or simply refused. Cat-Cat didn't seem to mind, she was a stray kitten and just glad that she'd found a home.